PEACE AND POLITICS

...Khrushchev's term—the shrimp whistles...

...rather that people are thinking of achieving peace by working for peace—not by spending more money to preserve the dangerous stalemate...

...In the field of foreign affairs, the voters expressed their conviction—by a margin of nearly three to one—that "ending the cold war" was more important than "increasing military strength...

...We have participated in previous conferences—on disarmament, nuclear testing, and surprise attack—but our conferees in every instance have been ill-prepared and inadequately instructed...

...When the two Democrats launched their campaigns, political analysts expected they would vie with each other in condemning the Eisenhower Administration for creating a "missile gap" and "endangering the nation's security" by not calling for larger appropriations for defense...

...When the Wisconsin campaign was over and the votes counted, the Editor of The Progressive talked with both candidates and their campaign managers...

...The most recent evidence to support this conclusion turned up the other day in a referendum of his constituency conducted by Representative Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin's second Congressional district...

...When the Russians make concessions to our proclaimed position, Kennedy charged, our delegates are totally unprepared to go on from there...

...To these forces, he said, "disarmament is still merely a fuzzy ideal for fuzzy idealists...

...its five counties include a modest amount of industry, substantial agricultural interests, many merchants, and a considerable white-collar professional group...

...The utter folly of the present arms race requires a new and different look at where we are headed...

...We were not prepared when we went to the disarmament conference in Geneva...

...Today, if we are willing to invest the necessary funds, time, research, and talent to harness the greatest minds in science throughout the world, we surely can devise a system of inspection and enforcement techniques that would provide against double-dealing and secret preparations for any great war...

...In his questionnaire to the people of his district, Representative Kastenmeier asked them to list their deepest concerns...

...We have had Presidential speeches, Presidential advisers, and Presidential commissions on disarmament—but no policy," Kennedy said repeatedly...

...This we have failed to do, except in the area of test ban negotiations, since 1952...

...Both appeared to repudiate the Acheson-Truman coolness toward negotiation...

...f The Democrats had succeeded in reviving old fears that it was the party of war—largely because cold war soldiers like former President Harry Truman and former Secretary of State Dean Acheson ridiculed negotiation with the Soviets, and because too many articulate Democrats in Congress could find nothing more evil to attack in the Eisenhower Administration than its failure to demand even greater appropriations for armaments...

...There is no one agency or person to coordinate this research or to see that decisions are made...

...Kennedy concurred in this conclusion...

...Both were quick to identify themselves with President Eisenhower's apparent willingness to conclude an agreement on the cessation of nuclear tests...

...Kennedy echoed a view long emphasized in The Progressive that there are "many powerful voices in the government—both in and out of the Pentagon—who do not want disarmament—or, professing to want it, do not really believe in it...

...The Congressman was quick to evaluate the results of his poll...

...It is against this background that the conduct of Presidential Candidates Kennedy and Humphrey in Wisconsin seems unusually significant...

...Kennedy and Humphrey vied with each other in condemning the Eisenhower Administration—because it was not taking a more positive and creative approach toward negotiated disarmament...

...In arguing to Wisconsin voters that the nation needs a National Peace Agency, Humphrey pointed out that "no single agency of the government has been given the responsibility or the funds to do an adequate job of studying the control problem...

...I am certain that the President is sincere when he says we want disarmament—but I am also afraid that the rest of the world is justified in wondering whether we really do...

...Both emphasized the need to establish new instruments for peacemaking, Humphrey by renewing his appeal for a National Peace Agency and Kennedy by countering with his recommendation for the establishment of an Arms Control Research Agency, both of which would be designed to consolidate and effectuate an affirmative American program of disarmament...

...Humphrey, too, in countless appearances before Wisconsin voters, lashed out at "mistaken policies" and "misguided individuals" that stand in the way of developing a genuinely effective disarmament program...

...More recently, science was able to present to the political leadership of the world the possibility of space exploration—again given sufficient funds and leadership...

...The truth is that we have never seriously, massively, intensively tried to put our scientific and technological capability to work to create the technical basis for a world security system, or a force for peace...

...We are meeting the Russians at the summit this spring to discuss, among other things, disarmament—but we have no idea what our stand will be...

...But who are the true realists— those interested in serious efforts at disarmament, or those who talk of war and weapons as though these were the good old days of the pre-nuclear era...

...In emphasizing the need for research facilities for peacemaking, Kennedy made the startling but little publicized statement that "what little research has been done has too often been negative—designing ways of evading proposed detection or inspection systems instead of perfecting the m—demonstrating what won't work instead of what will...

...The district is reasonably representative of the nation...

...they emphasized in almost the same language the urgent need to push ahead with more and more talks with the Soviets on every major issue and most notably disarmament...

...It would be a treacherous mistake, of course, to make too much of all this...

...We have never undertaken a Manhattan project for peace...

...I submit we have not even tried...

...Kennedy's indictment of the Administration's failures in the field of disarmament occasionally bordered on the sensational...

...But your replies indicate the debate strikes no responsive chord back home...

...There must be American leadership, American drive, American ingenuity to make a breakthrough that would end the arms race and secure the safety of our nation at the same time...

...Nearly two decades ago, the leaders of science were able to come to the political leadership of this nation and say that it appeared possible to create a nuclear weapon—given sufficient funds and leadership...

...There can be no disarmament, they say, until world tensions have eased—or until we know for certain that the Russians will live up to their agreements—or until a foolproof inspection system can be worked out—or until the Russians give up Communism and its dreams of world domination...

...During his intensive campaign, which carried him to every part of Wisconsin, Kennedy struck hard at the urgent need for a far more effective and affirmative approach to the problem of disarmament...

...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall mare you free" Peace and Politics POLITICAL ANALYSTS who live with an ear to the ground and a finger to the wind have missed what seems to us one of the most significant political developments of this Presidential year—the widespread reappearance of words and ideas like peace, negotiation, and disarmament which had been retired for so long from the campaign vocabulary of practical politicians...

...But just the opposite happened...

...Invariably they responded with enthusiasm when I talked of the need to end the arms race and the cold war, and their hearty concurrence was clear when I emphasized that mere words and hopes will not achieve peace—that we must have strong leadership, imaginative thinking, and concrete deeds to develop a genuinely affirmative American foreign policy...

...Both were significantly silent on the "missile gap...

...The United States," Humphrey declared, "cannot convincingly accuse the Soviet Union of refusing to accept adequate control in disarmament unless we present to the Soviets specific proposals for control...

...To understand the significance of what happened in this curious campaign it is essential to recall the events that immediately preceded it: f The Republicans had succeeded in establishing themselves, for the moment anyway, as the party of peace—largely because of Vice President Nixon's journey to the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower's reception of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and the President's decision— now that John Foster Dulles was dead—to participate in a summit conference this spring...

...There can be no disarmament, in short, according to these Pentagon and other policy makers, until—to use Mr...

...Correspondents covering the campaign were so bewitched by the contest between a Catholic and a Congregationalist that they failed to observe—or at least to report—that both Catholic and Congregationalist completely shunned not only the Acheson-Truman addiction to the cold war, but rejected as a principal weapon in their campaign arsenals the Stuart Symington-Lyndon Johnson insistence that the "missile gap" is the big issue of 1960...

...This is the issue that concerns most people most...

...Today at least six agencies of our government are involved in and concerned with the technical problems connected with the controlled cessation of nuclear weapons tests...

...The hope for peaceful settlement of all outstanding issues with the Soviet Union is uppermost in people's minds," he said...

...For survey after survey of public opinion convincingly demonstrates that the people who make up the precincts regard the negotiated settlement of differences between the Communist world and the West as America's number one priority in this age of nuclear weapons...

...There must be a way out...

...There has been a "missile debate" in Washington about the need to strengthen "the nation's capability to destroy a potential enemy," he reminded his constituents...

...Kastenmeier's conclusion was soon to be confirmed by an extraordinary—but completely unreported— development in Wisconsin's Presidential primary race between Democratic Senators Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts...

...On every occasion that offered an opportunity for questions and give-and-take discussion, I could sense from what people said and the way they said it that they want negotiations with the Russians to go forward until we have reached agreements that will assure enduring peace...

...For all our insistence on foolproof inspection and enforcement, he asserted on the campaign stump, we still don't have anything that "represents a single, clear-cut, well-defined, realistic American inspection proposal" for nuclear testing...

...Every type of audience I faced," said Humphrey, "showed an intense interest in having our government move forward toward disarmament and peace...

...In a number of speeches he denounced the Eisenhower Administration—not because it wasn't spending enough on rocket missiles, but because of its lack of preparation and policy in the field of peacemaking...

...The Massachusetts Democrat, for example, accused the Administration of duplicity in sometimes proposing arms control measures which it knew in advance "could not possibly be accepted" by the Soviets...

...But we believe there is some solid hope in the fact that two professional politicians seeking the Presidency in 1960 are competing with rival plans for mapping the road to peace and disarmament, that both have repudiated the cold war philosophy of their party's elders, that both refused to make an issue of the so-called missile gap, and that both concluded their campaigns with the conviction that words and ideas like peace, negotiation, and disarmament are not only good policy but good politics...

...This situation is indefensible...

...Drawing on his considerable experience as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Disarmament, the Minnesotan tangled frequently with the Eisenhower Administration—not because it wasn't pouring more money into missiles, but because it had failed to coordinate the nation's efforts toward peace, and lagged in developing workable control measures for disarmament...

...They were unanimous in asserting that the quest for peace represents the dominant concern of the electorate, and that people everywhere, whatever their political affiliation or economic status, are far more interested in discussing approaches to peace than methods of intensifying the arms race...

...It is no accident, of course, that the professionals whose hearts are in the precincts are now concerned with peace and ways to achieve it...

...The district was frequently Progressive in the LaFollette days, almost consistently Republican thereafter, and is now represented by a Democrat...